Effective Tips To Create Article Titles

After spending hours grueling away researching SEO-friendly keywords, crafting a high quality article and proofreading it, you’re left with writing an amazing title that will attract readers.

You ask, “How hard can it be to write the title? Just write!”

Do you know that one of the most important aspects of your article is the title? According to the infographic by BlueGlass, 80% of your audience will read the headline while a mere 20% of your audience will read the entire post. In fact, 50% of your emphasis when writing should be on your headline’s quality!

Simply put, your headline alone can make or break your article.

Your article’s title is equally as important as the content of your article. You need to arrest your readers' attention in the headline itself. This way, there is a higher chance that they will continue reading the rest of your article.

So, what are some surefire article titles?

Here are some concrete tips to help you craft your article titles:

After spending so much time researching on keywords, you definitely need to include these words in your article title. If possible, you can include the topic of your article. This way, the title will give readers a glimpse of what your article is about. Those who are interested will then continue reading your entire article.

In addition to including keywords and topics, you need to craft the title such that it’s a teaser and not a boring one-line summary. This is a much more difficult and time-consuming task.

You might need to think of a few article titles first. Eliminate those which are uninteresting and then, select the best article title from the remaining ones.

From the infographic by BlueGlass and The Content Rules Blog Post Template

• What You Should Know About…
• What Everyone Ought To Know About…
• How To…

You might have heard of the Five Ws concept in journalism. The 5W1H concept is similar in that it involves interrogative words:

• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• Why
• How

The only difference in the two concepts is that instead of gathering information, 5W1H aims to attract audience to read the article.

• 3 Tools to…
• 5 Tips to…
• Nine Ways to… [Source: The Content Rules Blog Post Template]

When you include numbers in your article title, you give readers the impression that you have a few solutions up your sleeve. For example, you have 3 solutions to overcome writer’s block. By including a number in your article title, you direct readers to focus on your 3 solutions to solve their problem. This small trick effectively establishes you as an industry thought leader.

You might be wondering whether to write the number in numerical or alphabetical format. By doing a simple Google search, there are more article titles that include a number in numerical form than in alphabetical form. This makes sense, considering that our eyes detect words that stand out. A number in numerical format will be more prominent than a number in alphabetical format.

From the infographic by BlueGlass and The Content Rules Blog Post Template

• Little Known Ways To…
• The Secrets of…

Your article title is crafted in such a way that it seems like you’re revealing a mystery for the first time. Such article titles arrest your readers’ attention and label your articles as exclusive information. This teaser tip is more challenging than the first two and it might take some practice.

After crafting a few teasers, you’ll need to select the best title. You can either choose by yourself, do a A/B test or use a program to choose for you. Jeff Bullas recommends this Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer to do the work for you. In fact, this article title has a 66.67% EMV Score!

Do share your experience and tips on how you create your article titles! Or even better, share headline formulas that you use often!

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